The Great White Picket Fence

After reading this week's volumes of Marxist theories (esp "The Fetishism of the Commodity"), I was forced to reflect on my own understanding of economic forces and how they affect us as individuals. 

I have always been mostly pro-establishment and a diehard fan of the capitalist system. This may or may not have to do with my reasonably privileged life, but I have never felt the teenage need to "rebel" or "question the system". However, Karl Marx, in his infinite wisdom, has managed to make me reconsider. 

According to Marx, "Fetishism" refers to the process by which commodities are emptied of their meaning; they are decontextualized and given abstract meaning. Their exchange value entirely trumps their actual value. I realized that this was very true! When we got to discussing the current economic recession in class the other day, someone brought up the fact that one of the major reasons that Americans lost their homes/money was because they took out loans they couldn't afford, and banks let them, despite knowing better! And the only reason they took out loans in the first place, was so that they could fit into the typical "American dream" concept of the house in the suburbs with the white picket fence. The whole concept of "credit cards" was brought about so that people could live outside their means; in other words, so that they could emulate the ruling class, even though it wasn't economically feasible for them to do so. And that is what led to the recession: buying on credit, buying into the fetish of the commodity. It is just an image, not a reality.

On another note, I really need to address this news story: 

It is a coverage of a terrorist attack outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. This affects me directly because my father is currently working in Kabul with the UN, and this puts him in danger almost everyday. What I wanted to point out about this story, is how it got very little coverage, and was forced into the background of news media.

This was done because a bomb in Afghanistan isn't "fresh". It happens all the time. Therefore, President Obama' winning the Nobel Peace Prize (which is in itself ridiculous- what has the man done to deserve it??) gets the front page, while stories that are much more pressing get pushed back because they will not bring profits, or "entertain". This ties directly into another one of Marx's ideas: that of mass media as a means of production. There is a "conceptual world view". The ruling class (who are, in this case, the media conglomerates) tell us what to think, by rejecting contradicting points of view. Therefore, while an independent blog reporting the issues faced by a Sudanese village might be more important than Miley Cyrus' latest performance, it will not get more coverage, and it will not be read or discussed by a majority of the country's media analysts, because the current ideologies of the ruling class are "positive" (to keep everyone happy, and in a "buying mood" during this time of recession).